Oto Batelka

“[My brother told me:] ‘Come on, I will show you what our father was talking about.’ There was an antiaircraft gun which was used when general Štefánik’s plane was landing. So we went there. Even today I could show you the exact place. You would probably see it from the road; you needn’t go to the Castle. Then it was covered with some wooden boarding or cardboard, you know, antiaircraft gun. I remember it very well though I was only seven-year-old boy. I recall that long gun barrel and his words: ‘It was the plane which had fired on Štefánik.’”

“They told me: ‘We have got a session every day and we state,’ (because then they investigated the group of Doctor Fedor Turza) ‘that you are the only one from the whole group who says the truth. Thus we, the whole administration, agreed that we should offer you the collaboration with us. We will enable you to go abroad with your family and on the other hand you will cooperate with us in the matter of emigration.’ My minute book had about sixty-five pages; the last note was approximately six or seven lines long. I have never joined any party. And I wasn’t willing to join the KSS and collaborate with the Central Office of the State Security.”

“I was with that fisherman in the first car; it was a kind of lorry. The car with Letrich’s brother was driven by major Šavel and they followed us. The whole way was absolutely trouble-free. Lettrich, the chairman of the Slovak National Council, joined us in Patrónka and said goodbye to his sister. Then they got in the car and followed us as we drove the lorry in the direction of Hochštetno when the fisherman ordered us to stop. We did it and they came to us in two or three minutes. They switched off the car lights and we said goodbye to each other. He took them right to the river Morava where they boarded the boat and went away. The next day I came to know that they, I mean Fraštacký, Hodža, Lettrich and also his brother, came there and met one another at the American Embassy in Vienna.”

“‘Where does engineer Batelka live?’ I said: ‘It’s me.’ So he told me: ‘We are from the State Security and you have to go with us. Come home now.’ I walked about one hundred meters with them. I told them that I wanted to change my clothes. They allowed me to do that and stood between the room and kitchen, on our veranda. When I had changed my clothes, I noticed my four-year-old son playing in the yard in the sandpit. I jumped out of the window on the ground floor, then over the banister and I ran up the street. Of course, I didn’t know at that time that they followed me; they jumped out of the balcony door and asked my son what way his father had escaped. He was so resourceful and responded: ‘He went down.’ However, I ran the opposite direction.”

“[In the book] Návrat do Itaky Drahoslav Machala wrote in details about the whole life of the general of aviation Ambruš. It’s written there that the general Ambruš got an order and subsequently was driven to Vajnory to the Stein brewery where the plane was awaiting him. He wrote that he piloted it and flew to Schwechat airport in Austria. It wasn’t the truth, though. There was no plane. I wrote a letter to Machala in 1990 and he responded me that in a short period of time he would come to me to clarify those facts. I am still waiting but nobody comes. I am sure about one thing. General Ambruš went away the same way as Lettrich and his brother; he crossed the river Morava in Hochštetno to get into exile.”

“They were really timid. They didn’t want and, you know, they didn’t believe anybody. They were battered, investigated and beaten and things like that, so they had various gazes on their bodies. So a man couldn’t wonder at it, you know. However, everyone who got there was very surprised.”